It sucks that people have to lose their jobs but at the end of the day someone is footing the bill for their salary and those people tend to not to like to lose money.

Since we don't have access to their financials we don't know, but I would assume that the games weren't losing money or they would've been shuttered before now.

It annoys me when businesspeople refer to "losing money" when the accurate statement would be "making a lower profit than desired".

Since we don't have access to the financials, it may very well have been SOE was losing money on Everquest. SOE could have, and probably did, take the portfolio view on their titles; so long as the money lost was made up for elsewhere in the portfolio, it's all good.

Business speak for "making a lower profit than desired" is "underperforming", not "losing money". You only admit to "losing money" when you actually are losing money. And even then, you probably wouldn't admit to it unless you were losing a lot of money.

It sucks that people have to lose their jobs but at the end of the day someone is footing the bill for their salary and those people tend to not to like to lose money.

Since we don't have access to their financials we don't know, but I would assume that the games weren't losing money or they would've been shuttered before now.

It annoys me when businesspeople refer to "losing money" when the accurate statement would be "making a lower profit than desired".

I don't know the specifics and neither do you.. it's just as likely that as a stand alone entity EQ and EQ2 were not making a profit. SOE has slightly unique offerings that could blur what is profitable and not.

Aint nothing new about the world order..it's been playing since the day they put George Washington on a quarterDelivering Truth while the 10% deliver lies.

Says the guy who got to keep his job...
This sort of stuff I find extremely tasteless. Like high turnover is just a natural consequence of the industry.
There is no hidden bylaw that dictates the necessity for that in any industry.

It's an epidemic for sure.. but in many ways we only have ourselves to blame for some of the issues in the game development industry. High Tech (CES) is a brutal business all around (Game Dev even more). The cost and time to produce a game have only go up but the actual price we as consumers pay for games has largely gone down. The CES industry figured this part out pretty good in that they kept their costs low by shipping jobs overseas and manufacturing overseas where they can get close to "slave" labor to continue to feed the world underpriced Smartphones and Laptops/HDTV's/Tablets (etc.). The Game Industry has sent some asset design off-shore and developed tools to somewhat control costs but overall it hasnt made that much difference. If we want our game developers to lead somewhat normal lives then I would imagine paying far more per game is what we really need to accept.

I have lots of friends that are software developers who work 9 to 5's at large corporations and make a healthy salary and rarely work long hours (there are occasional crunches) and can pretty much pick and choose where they want to work for the most part. Some of them are ex-game developers and say they will never return to that realm (though they do enjoy making games just not what has to come with it).

It's easy to blame Publishers or Investors for all the ills in Game Development...but I think that's only part of the problem.

Aint nothing new about the world order..it's been playing since the day they put George Washington on a quarterDelivering Truth while the 10% deliver lies.

His take? That SOE/Daybreak has been mismanaged for sometime and the people who needed to get fired, didn't.

That right there is the epidemic. That is wide spread and reaches far more industries that game development or software development in general. And even if some of the right ones do get fired, they seem the most resilient and bounce from company to company spreading their toxins.

edit: that article points the finger at Smedley and I just find that hard to believe. He has a track record of keeping the ship afloat. I may not always agree with his decisions but never really question his leadership. Case in point is what happened with Vanguard. In this day and age that game could easily have never been released. Yet it was released, it survived a horrible launch, carved a niche for itself and generated revenue for 5+ years.
I do have to admit that selling to an investment firm does give me pause that Smed is looking for a golden parachute. Not that he'd run the company into the ground but who knows, he may be waffling over the merits of running a game company?

Also, if true I wish Perfect World would have bought Daybreak. Not that Perfect World is ideal by any stretch, but I would have preferred EQ/EQ2 to have the dreaded lockboxes versus 40-50% layoffs and seemingly every product under development under question. Oh and I am still pissed beyond belief about "The Agency" being scrapped. (the Division can't come soon enough)

Hmm.. you make the assumption that the products were making money but were closed regardless. It's more likely that people who like making money wouldn't shut down a product that was making money. You don't stay in business very long shutting down profitable entities. While I don't know the specifics of the financials of SOE I can go with the logical assumption based on what I do know about PE firms.

Your view seems to be more to blame the investors than the product. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Aint nothing new about the world order..it's been playing since the day they put George Washington on a quarterDelivering Truth while the 10% deliver lies.

Two sides of the same coin.
Though I am curious GG, you have to know some PEs that have scrapped something profitable if it wasn't profitable enough whether the product was the only source of revenue or a trickle among hundreds.

I am not saying the latter is categorically unwise. I am saying that the latter is categorically unwise in the mmo industry, where stable revenue, nearly no matter how small, is very valuable amidst the sea of uncertain potential and potential profitability.

Hmm.. you make the assumption that the products were making money but were closed regardless. It's more likely that people who like making money wouldn't shut down a product that was making money. You don't stay in business very long shutting down profitable entities. While I don't know the specifics of the financials of SOE I can go with the logical assumption based on what I do know about PE firms.

Your view seems to be more to blame the investors than the product. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Actually yes, your clarification is more accurate than my conjecture. Also, you caught the brunt of my ire even though you weren't actually the target; the healthcare organization I work for has used the term "losing money" in place of "making less profit than last year" when discussing cutbacks (and yes, I've seen the financials so I know the distinction). It's inaccurate shorthand that really bugs me.

Your conjecture that the games could actually have been losing money individually (but possibly netting money for SOE via their presence in the All-Access Account) may very well be right instead of my conjecture that the games simply weren't profitable enough for the tastes of the new owners.

So my main contention was that we each are making an assumption based upon our individual biases, but unless someone can break out some hard data, we may never know the truth.

Apologies for my combative tone, and thanks for your patience with me.

I don't like to hear of anyone losing their jobs, it's a sh*tty situation that I've been in enough times during my life that I'll always have some sympathy for those affected. All the same, I am not at all surprised that we're hearing about a LOT of jobs being cut at SOE.

It's admittedly been several years since I had close internal contacts at SOE, but I can tell you that when I did their hiring practices always shocked the hell out of me. It was always far more important to know someone, or be "internet famous" in regards to an SOE property than it was to actually have any useful job skills. I have zero doubt that the SOE staff in the San Diego office particularly was horribly bloated by ineffective low skilled individuals that got hired by a friend. Hell, I even liked some of these folks a lot but that doesn't mean they knew how to design a paper bag, much less complex gaming encounters and systems.

So in the end I don't assume that the new investors are in it just to strip the flesh and salt the wound. They may well run it into the ground given time, but an initial wave of layoffs may just mean they're dealing with the dead weight that many people have known has been there for quite a long time.

I don't like to hear of anyone losing their jobs, it's a sh*tty situation that I've been in enough times during my life that I'll always have some sympathy for those affected. All the same, I am not at all surprised that we're hearing about a LOT of jobs being cut at SOE.

It's admittedly been several years since I had close internal contacts at SOE, but I can tell you that when I did their hiring practices always shocked the hell out of me.

Me too for the first one. Seems like PS2 has been in maintenance mode for months, though that can be explained by PS4 development.
For the second one...I have written bugs. I admit it. So I'm hoping this isn't just some part of my brain going "I'm a better programmer than you", but the bugs in PS2 are just f*cking hilarious sometimes.

The layoff structure doesn't surprise me, it was only a question of which properties they believed wouldn't be the most profitable. Plus whoever was an scored an underperformer or the target of an axe to grind. Now we know.

Two sides of the same coin.
Though I am curious GG, you have to know some PEs that have scrapped something profitable if it wasn't profitable enough whether the product was the only source of revenue or a trickle among hundreds.

I am not saying the latter is categorically unwise. I am saying that the latter is categorically unwise in the mmo industry, where stable revenue, nearly no matter how small, is very valuable amidst the sea of uncertain potential and potential profitability.

I will repeat that I'm not privy to any financial data so I'm simply making logical assumptions. I do have some knowledge of SOE (I worked professionally with Dave and the EQ2 team when we owned a mobile gaming dev company in Raleigh.. we developed a mobile companion app for EQ/EQ2) and at that time frame (2009-2010) the product was a mess code wise and profit wise. It eked out a sustainable living but it was certainly even back then largely in maintenance mode. No one on the team had much hope that fortunes were going to change and the entire product line was viewed internally as a "fan service".

I suspect what the investors did was formally put the product on maintenance mode to take whatever little profits it brought in and direct them towards more lucrative and potential profits. We got the impression though that if not for the Station Pass that many of their products didnt make much sense as stand alone entities.

Agent 86 wrote:

Here's an opinion piece on the state of Daybreak written by someone who has covered them for a long time.

His take? That SOE/Daybreak has been mismanaged for sometime and the people who needed to get fired, didn't.

I find this interesting. Having dealt with some similar situations it seems surprising to me that Smedley has that kind of clout to scuttle a potential deal. I don't know the details of his deal with Sony but I would be shocked if he was anything more than a salaried employee with some stock. Now pissing him off might worry the owners that he would flee and take key people with him dealing a talent blow that was not recoverable but given SOE was trying to sell off the company anything but him calling up Perfect World and saying I got 20 people ready to walk out with me if you finalize this deal..and even then I have to scratch my head.

EQNext sounds like a mess though...

Aint nothing new about the world order..it's been playing since the day they put George Washington on a quarterDelivering Truth while the 10% deliver lies.

So basically it looks like the PE company is going to be left with the IP's to shop around to the highest bidder. Or at the least they are going to put PS2 into near maintenance mode.

Nexon Planetside 2 anyone? Cryptic DCUO? NCSoft EQ,2,L,N anyone?
Maybe Perfect World will be running EQ in a round about way? Maybe that is why the deal collapsed, they knew they could wait on it, let one of the other inexperienced companies buy and squander it and pick it up for peanuts. (that would be tactical investment genius, gamers as collateral damage aside)

Interesting stuffs ya'll have posted... All the infos available is so sketchy:( I basically remain glad i've cancelled my sub and hopeless as to their future.

Regarding EQ and EQ2 becoming immediately more profitable thanks to the layoffs, I dunno how you can say that.

What if they scare off enough subscribers who just give up on it instead of continue to subscribe? News like this sure had enough of a negative impact on me that i cancelled my Subscription i had intended to keep going with indefinitely.

I have to wonder how many customers will drop out around or because of all this stuff. Any time you gut teams you risk losing customers too, who lose faith in you as a company.

I would think it remains to be seen what kind of immediate impact this will have. SoE could end up with thousands of cancellations almost immediately blowing up any increased profit they thought they'd see from the layoffs...

Trouble...
Trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble
Trouble been doggin' my soul since the day I was born

Not that I delight in this in the slightest. I loved the look of Planetside 2 and I loved Planetside 1. But the gameplay of PS2 never meshed with me so I dropped it after the first week of beta. They way over-complicated the systems and progression yet still, many enjoyed it and I'll be really sorry to see it go or become a throw away title with value only as a part of the All Access pass.